


flash point

by Kalopsia



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: (Ish) - Freeform, M/M, Stream of Consciousness, but this goes before that and during it and afterwards, elements of noncon but nothing too graphic (it's the halloween party), michael and jeremy had a thing before the squip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2017-09-22
Packaged: 2019-01-04 05:31:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12162507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalopsia/pseuds/Kalopsia
Summary: you know what they say, jeremy heere. those who play with fire are bound to get burned.(Jeremy kisses Michael on a worn red leather couch the summer before their junior year. Then he takes the Squip, and it’s all ablaze from there.)





	flash point

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from _science_ (ooo). According to Wikipedia, "The flash point of volatile material is the lowest temperature at which vapors of the material will ignite, when given an ignition source."
> 
> (i've been sitting on this fic for weeks. it is what it is. it's your fic now. i hope you enjoy!!)

 

* * *

  **years**

* * *

 

There are times before his mother leaves where he stays silent and cold because he knows there are more important things going on here than him.

His mom and dad are too wrapped up in each other to deal with him, scrambling to pull together the pieces of their marriage before everything splinters between them. Every word is cold and brutal and icy inside Jeremy’s spine. The steam from Jeremy’s untouched pasta clouds his parents’ faces across the table, and it’s almost enough to shield him from seeing them break apart.

He doesn’t blame them. The shattering has been happening for a long time now. If he tries, he can trace the cracks back through years, through holidays and birthdays and long-forgotten humdrum school nights. There’s not a certain start to them, just intricate breaks that begin one day and don’t stop adding up until suddenly it's too late to fix them. The evidence is there, he’s not denying it, because the cracks that his parents create are where Jeremy grows his roots.

He is religiously aware that there are more important things going on here than what’s inside his own head. He just wishes he could be apart of those other things, for once, instead of watching his parents disappear into the screen of steam that separates them.

Mom and Dad take him out of his head and let him in on the divorce on Christmas Eve. He remembers how it was snowing a little bit that morning, something Michael had texted him about in all caps long before the sun had even risen. The world was still cold and peaceful and quiet around him but he’d woken up anyway and excitedly texted back a picture of the icicles hanging from the gutters. Michael had sent back a series of emojis and Jeremy had fallen back asleep, his **< 3 :P** still warm in Jeremy’s heart.

Before bed the night before, his parents had ordered Chinese food and let him have all three fortune cookies once he ate all the vegetables in his fried rice.

The next morning, hours after the icicle and the **< 3 **and the resulting warm glow, his parents set Jeremy down on the red leather couch and explained that they were separating. Divorce was barely in his vocabulary.

The only reason the word is there at all is because three weeks ago, Chloe Valentine had come into art class wearing brand-new purple Uggs and a shiny gold bracelet and her braces were off, and she told everyone how her dad was moving into a bigger house and how now she’d sometimes be living in Connecticut on weekends but not on Fridays. Brooke, hesitant but still full of light, tried to comfort her best friend, except Chloe cut her off and held out her tiny wrist to show off the glinting gold band.

She said her parents bought all these pretty presents for her after they told her about the divorce. Now she had two bedrooms and two Christmases and two different families to give her presents.

“But there’s only one of you,” Jeremy said, quietly from four seats away.

“Well, _I’m_ enough,” Chloe said loftily back, thinning her lips and frowning a little bit as she looked down at him. She’d already hit her growth spurt, so now she was all arching limbs and taut torso and soft shoulders, while Jeremy was still delicate and sharp everywhere his bones touched skin. Chloe pursed her lips and added, “But I guess _you_ won’t ever be, will you? _”_

Michael had leaned into Jeremy and wrinkled his nose. “What’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

“It means shut up,” Chloe snapped, her voice strangely venomous for someone who claimed to be glittering in doubles. Her lips curled up into a sneer and she spat, _“Losers.”_

The word sinks underneath Jeremy’s skin like a branding and spreads around the school like wildfire. Michael flinches at the word and it’s the first time Jeremy sees what it’s like to burn, but all he feels is the chill after being turned away from the warmth.  

When his parents tell him about their divorce, he thinks they’ve forgotten the whole double-presents part, because all he gets is a hug from his mom and the swift scent of her perfumed cheek against his skin before she’s walking out of the house. They may have forgotten to give him a gift, but he mostly forgives them anyway.

His dad looks older now, but he smiles extra hard, just for him, so Jeremy figures he should, too.

 

* * *

  **months**

* * *

  

The verbal brand that Chloe left on him doesn’t go away, not even after art class or on the bus when he accidentally falls asleep against Michael’s shoulder or when they’re playing videos games on the beanbags in Michael’s basement. It especially doesn’t go away when Jeremy’s dad picks him up from school wearing a t-shirt littered with holes and ratty boxers that couldn’t quite pass as shorts, or when Michael comes out to him at the beginning of eighth grade in the bathroom before gym class only to have Jake Dillinger overhear and tell everyone. It’s always there, a constant murmur that smolders under his skin just enough so he can’t forget.

 _Loser_ stays with him even years later when Jeremy smokes his first joint in Michael’s car in his driveway at the end of sophomore year. These days, _loser_ is not the only word they’re called. _Asshole. Gay. Fucking Freak._ They’re all added to the list of ever-growing reasons why Jeremy will never find a place alongside the people keeping him in the dark.

It’s not that he gets picked last, it’s that he usually never gets picked at all. He keeps working to catch up with everyone else but some part of him knows he’ll never make it there. At least, not the way he is now.

He falls back to the present, back to the dim haze in Michael’s car at the end of sophomore year. Jeremy’s eyes catch on the softness of Michael’s skin and follow the curve of his shoulder into smooth arm into familiar hand before settling into the warm brush of Michael’s fingers against his own as Michael hands him the lighter.

The gentle touch sends flames licking up Jeremy’s back and dancing in his belly. He can’t remember the words they call him now. Doesn’t mind being nobody’s choice. Compared to Michael’s _close_ and _real_ and _home_ , everything else seems so far away. And then Michael lifts his hands to curve against Jeremy's jaw, and he feels only warmth.

Something about Michael’s hands on his skin make Jeremy feel dizzy and heavy and the touch is almost enough to calm the fire that’s alighted in his spine. He opens his mouth to tell him this, but then Michael is blowing more smoke towards Jeremy’s parted lips from across the cup holders and suddenly the fire is back, consuming every paper thought Jeremy’s ever had until the notions are nothing but ash.

“I was gonna say something,” Jeremy breathes, feeling as concrete as the smoke between them.

(He can’t stop staring at Michael’s mouth, can’t stop the intoxicating high that comes from being _so close not close enough._ He should do something to stop this, except he doesn’t even know what _this_ is.)

“Mm?” Michael says lazily, leaning back against his headrest and letting the joint rest between his lips. He is otherworldly. Through the haze, he’s as elusive as the warm evening light that’s dripping through the tinted glass.

Jeremy eyes catch on him once again, a mirage, the feeling flickering like embers at the root of his skull, but it alights and gets too bright to look at before he can get too close. “I forget.”

Michael’s hum bubbles into a laugh and he hangs his hand on the armrest, palm facing up. He wriggles his fingers, and it’s all Jeremy can do to intertwine his own through Michael’s and squeeze.

He knows he shouldn’t, but Jeremy keeps reaching for his touch long after they leave the car that day at the end of sophomore year. As the hours blaze into weeks and he still can’t quite quit the habit, he thinks it’s maybe the only thing keeping him from going entirely up in flames.

It’s not always linked hands. Sometimes Michael’s head will end up on his stomach. Sometimes Jeremy will curl against Michael’s side and relax into the rise and fall of his breathing. Sometimes he’ll rest his back against Michael’s chest and Michael will draw his arms around him, safe and steady and constant. Sometimes they’ll tumble to the couch and fit together sweet and easy before they lose themselves in zombies and mushrooms, devoured by the blue glow from the TV and each other’s high-addled glances and easy warm grins.

These days, there’s a kick in his heart and lurch in his stomach whenever he looks at Michael. It keeps setting his insides aflame and burning away the brush. Sometimes, for a brief moment, the char clears just enough for Michael’s heady gaze to steal Jeremy’s breath. The space between them becomes nothing but an invitation to get closer.

They have their first kiss the summer before junior year on that same couch that his mom sat him down on years ago. They both lean in first. They are both high on smoke and the temptation to set themselves ablaze. The couch is red and leather and they’re both sinking into the cushions and then into each other and Michael is the Sun and Jeremy thought he knew better than to get too close but he lets Michael surround him anyway.

Michael feels inevitable. Their mouths slot together, rough but right, and everything falls into place. The fire that comes when Michael’s hands drop to Jeremy’s waist burns away the rough and leaves him raw and new. His blood is too hot and Michael’s tongue swiping over his lower lip sets something on fire inside of him, something he knows will burn forever.

It keeps happening, again and again and again, until the days are weeks are months, until Michael’s body, heavy and safe around him, begins to feel less like smothering and more like kindling.

But then the smoke sets in, every time, equally unavoidable, and it suffocates the heat inside him and fills in the space between them and Jeremy doesn’t do anything to clear the air.

(He never did anything to clear the air)

(Maybe that was the problem all along)

 _Asshole Loser Fucking Freak_ runs on repeat in Jeremy’s head but he thinks maybe he could stay this close to him forever and not turn to dust so long as Michael keeps moving _just like that_ against his hips and neither of them will talk about it when they’re sober.

Burning is a quiet thing, Jeremy finds in the whisper of space between their lips every time he pulls away. Fire does not echo.

Fire consumes.

 

* * *

  **weeks**

* * *

 

Sober, his mind is cacophonous but he’s rarely known silence. He’s rarely known slotting against another person and fitting like he was meant to be there. He’s rarely known the light of acceptance and the stability from being _just like them_ . Every time he does, it gives him just enough hope to keep trying. It’s never enough. It will never be enough. All he knows is feeling _other_ and _lesser_ and _freak_ and _asshole_ and _loser._

He sees Brooke and Chloe and Rich and Jake, watches them learn how to wield the world like a weapon around their fingertips. Jeremy learns that loneliness is dark and that even with Michael, it’s all his mind can do to fill in the left-behind silence with enough noise to convince him he’s solid instead of smoke.

The noise in his head tells him to focus on Christine. The _idea_ of her promises to teach him everything he’s rarely known, and so he scrambles for purchase at her side. He desperately aches to find acceptance, and so his words fail on his lips and Christine _becomes_ the idea and shines untouchable just out of reach, until the rest of the world has fallen away and all Jeremy can do is scramble for a hold.

 

* * *

  **days**

* * *

 

He pretends he feels the same flame inside him when he’s with her as he does when he’s with him.

 

* * *

  **during**

* * *

 

He takes the pill.

He stops fumbling his words. He knows exactly how to wear his backpack and how to stand when talking to people and how to get abs and how to be something other than a _loser_ and how to change himself until he no longer recognizes who he used to be. He learns that sparks down his spine will save him from his undoing.

Brooke flirts with him. Jake talks to him. Christine accepts him. The Squip makes sure of that, and then some.

For the first time in his life, he has all of the answers. He knows all the tricks. He gets chosen and gets chosen _first._ He stops expecting to not get picked at all. Their attention feels warm, like he’s finally being turned back towards the light. After years of being _other_ and _lesser_ and _freak_ to them, he’s finally one of them, and it is ardently euphoric and brilliantly bright and everything he thought it would be.

They don’t call him _loser_ anymore.

Michael is dumbfounded by Jeremy’s newfound popularity but his excitement seems clunky, like it doesn’t quite fit anymore alongside who Jeremy has become. The distance between them grows and frost forms in the space that’s left behind. It freezes Jeremy a little bit, chilling his chest every time he ditches Michael in favor of something else, but he can handle it.

The warmth from being so close to the light is enough to thaw the chill. The Squip says that’s enough, and the Squip has always had all the answers.

Why would it be wrong now?

 

* * *

  **during**

* * *

 

The pill replaces the voices in his head and tells him to take and ignite and take and burn until there is nothing left behind but blackened coals. Jeremy scrambles up, up, and away from his dad and away from the memory of his mother and away from the noise and away from Michael in order to get what he wants.

( _but_ _i want him too,_ he tries again and again and again until the Squip shows him the light, offers him a deal it knows Jeremy won’t refuse).

Jeremy climbs on the backs of everyone he’s ever known and leaps, and it’s only as he’s reaching forward that he finds that he is not smoke: he will not rise.

 _Optic nerve blocking: on,_ he says in response to the Squip’s offer, and falls back towards the flames.

He wonders how close he can get to the fire before he turns to ash.

 

* * *

  **during**

* * *

 

Halloween is:

Brooke handing him a red cup and planting a kiss on his cheek. Rich seeing Jeremy’s hands on Brooke’s hips and tilting his cup towards them with a wink before he starts yelling about Mountain Dew Red. Jeremy concealing his red face by kissing her proper in greeting. Brooke blushing and pulling Jeremy outside and into a crowd and accepting the bowl and taking a hit. Jeremy watching the glass slide between her lips and remembering the dizzying high from that car at the end of sophomore year. The Squip stealing the memory away before he think about it too hard. Getting dragged away from Brooke by Chloe, who drags him upstairs and locks them in a bedroom and pushes him onto a bed before he can even process what’s happening.

Halloween is:

Chloe on top of him and Jeremy not thinking straight even though it’s the first time the Squip has _shut the fuck up_ and _left him alone, please_ since he took it in the first place.

Alcohol sloshing in his belly and burning his mouth when Chloe kisses him, and kisses him, even though he doesn’t want to kiss her back.

The Squip telling him to do so anyway, forcing his chin up towards her mouth and Jeremy thinking of a red leather couch just before everything glitches quiet. Hearing Brooke’s voice on the other side of the door and, for a moment: silence.

Halloween is:

Well. Almost. He can still hear Chloe breathing in his ear and pressing her finger hard against his lips to keep him quiet, as if he ever needed help staying silent when he should have said _no_.

Jake slamming the door. It doesn’t open. He’s screaming. The noise is angry and pained and desperate and accompanied by Jake’s fist pounding against the wood in time with Jeremy’s heartbeat.

Halloween is:

Jeremy wishing more than anything that the door would just fucking _break_ already so Jake could pry Chloe off him and send a fist flying against his skull and maybe take the Squip along with it. Chloe sliding her thighs around Jeremy’s waist and moaning extra loud and Jeremy not breathing not moving and the flames searing too-bright all around him and feeling the fire as Chloe kisses him again, but he’s thinking he got too close to the light because this fire blisters him instead of thaws him, and he can’t pull away he can’t move he’s hearing broken Japanese in his head and Chloe gasping into the shell of his ear and Jeremy’s wishing more than anything that this would all just _stop_ but it doesn’t. It isn’t going to. He made sure of that himself.

Halloween is:

not what he wants, anymore.

 

* * *

  **during**

* * *

 

Later, he finds Michael in the bathroom.

He’s not lying when he says it’s good to see him. It is. The sight of Michael there, only a breath away, fills him with an aching glow that simply warms instead of burns him. It feels welcoming, soothing against his flayed chest, it’s just- he can’t quite place why none of it feels quite right.

And then Michael says, “ _Think_ about it, man! We’re talking an insanely powerful supercomputer. You really think its primary function is to get you _laid?”_

Jeremy once again flashes back to a car at the end of sophomore year, a worn red leather couch and Michael’s lips slotting against his own and Jeremy’s blood running too hot under his skin. He wants, he wants him so badly but it doesn’t _fit_ with who he _is_ now so he can’t _have._

The subsequent rush of emotion scares him into spitting out a disbelieving, “What does it matter? Unless- _you_ wanted to be the one do that yourself?” He snorts, cold and cruel, and prays Michael doesn’t believe the words that are coming out of his own mouth.

The heat feels so far away.

Michael manages, “What are you _talking_ about, Jeremy?”

Jeremy wants to throw up when he hears the ache in Michael’s tone, but he covers his self-disgust with a caustic, “God. And I thought _Chloe_ was jealous.”  

Michael flinches, a visceral thing that tightens Jeremy’s throat and locks his abdomen. Michael’s shoulders hunch and he looks so impossibly small, just like that first time that Chloe marked them both with her inky insults, the day that Jeremy learned what this all meant. Or at least, what he thought this all meant.

He can’t feel the light, anymore.

Jeremy tries to leave before he can do anything more, but Michael stands in his way. Jeremy sneers, but Michael only stares at him, shattered and wrecked and bleeding underneath unrecognition and disbelief. His eyes are dark and pleading and desperate for Jeremy to relent.

He doesn’t.

Instead, he shoves Michael aside with his shoulder and ignores how Michael’s warm soft dry skin feels against his own arm. He wields the world like a weapon on his fingertips and aims for the kill, just like he had always wanted.

“Get out of my way,” he spits at Michael as he walks away. _“Loser.”_

 

* * *

  **during**

* * *

  

The Squip powers back on and leads him to a locker with a shoebox. Jake doesn’t have a house anymore but he _does_ have two broken legs, and Jeremy sees his casts as he’s handing out the pills.

When Jeremy asks why, The Squip tells him that Jake had had to jump out of the window to escape the house fire.

When Jeremy asks why, the Squip tells him that Rich had burned it down right after Jeremy left the party.

When Jeremy asks why, the Squip sends a white-hot shock down his spine and tells him to stop asking questions and get to work.

Jeremy gets to work. He slips the gray oblong pill to everyone he knows and lets the soda do the rest. He shows up late to the play and hopes nobody will notice the way his eyes feel too tired against the too-bright world.

When he finds her, (the Squip makes sure he finds her), Christine doesn’t see anything about him that _doesn’t_ scream Midsummer Zombie. All Jeremy can see is how she’s still shining, always just out of reach.

But she’s no longer the light he’s looking for, and now that he knows this he doesn’t know what to do next.

The Squip, as always, provides an answer.

“It’s a computer,” it croons to her through him. “It tells you what to do. You just _know_ everything. You have all the answers. You know exactly who to become and how.”

“Jeremy…” Christine says, her voice soft and beautiful and for a moment he’s almost convinced that this will work. Then she says what he was never able to accept, “That sounds _horrible.”_

“No, _listen-_ ” He tries, but he can’t tell if it’s him that’s desperate or the Squip. “It’s not like that, I thought that too! It’ll help you be _better.”_

(Because he _is_ better now, isn’t he? He has to be. There has to be a reason why he did all this in the first place. It can’t all have been for _nothing,_ he thinks, _red leather couch and a car at the end of sophomore year-)_

Christine says, a little hurt, “What’s wrong with me now?”

Jeremy knows in that instant that for all he tries, he will never reach her. The Squip, however, doesn’t give up so easily, and suddenly Jeremy can’t move his own body. The only thing that’s _him_ anymore is one of the voices in his head, the papery thoughts that keep getting pushed too close to the fire for him to recognize as his own.

_Not everyone is as open to change as you were, Jeremy._

(Warm evening light dripping in through tinted glass. Feeling as concrete as smoke.)

_Offering them a choice would simply delay the results we desire._

(Asshole. Loser. Fucking Freak.)

“This isn’t what I _wanted-_ ”

_I anticipated your resistance, too._

(What _does_ he want?)

_So I took the decision out of your hands._

The next few minutes are a blur. There’s Mountain Dew and Christine approaching him with her shine having ignited into flame and fear unlike he’s ever known before and he is alone he is _alone_ he is nothing but smoke trying to _finally, finally_ fight against the computer in his _brain_ and then there’s Michael-

There’s _Michael-_

And Michael is holding him down, his chin pressed into the curve of Jeremy’s shoulder, Jeremy’s back pressed into Michael’s chest, his arms wrapped around his body warm and dry and safe

(just like they have a thousand times before a thousand years ago except not like this _never like this)_

and Jeremy _wants_ him so badly wants this all to end and for him to go back to kissing Michael on that red leather couch but the Squip has set him on fire and the flames are licking up his body and climbing up his spine and alighting his blood and he’s burning, he’s burning and he’s turning to ash and his bones are blazing and there’s screaming and the fire is roaring and he’s okay with blistering away if it means everything would just _stop_ except there is nothing, there is everything

there is until there _isn’t_

and there isn’t much else, after that.

 

* * *

  **after**

* * *

 

(Jeremy is religiously aware that there are more important things going on here than what’s in his own head)

 

* * *

  **after**

* * *

  

(Michael remains otherworldly. Through the haze, he’s as elusive as the warm evening light that’s dripping through the tinted glass)

 

* * *

  **after**

* * *

  

(Fire has consumed)

 

* * *

**after**

* * *

 

Here’s what _after_ ends up being:

They don’t talk about it because Jeremy is bone-crushingly, earth-shatteringly, breathtakingly afraid that Michael won’t accept his answers. They don’t talk about it because Jeremy can’t stand the way Michael’s hands shake sometimes when he thinks he isn’t looking. They don’t talk about it because Michael is hurt and Jeremy isn’t sure if he’ll ever stop being the reason why.

But then the silence becomes its own force, sliding between them and forcing them apart again. It’s the scarily familiar threat of burning out, the chilling ice that settles between them without any hope of thaw ahead, that finally scares them into action. They are more afraid of losing each other _again_ than they are of what might happen between them when they finally bring it up. So they start there.

It happens slowly. Jeremy sits closer to Michael when he comes over, letting their arms brush as he falls onto the red leather couch next to him. He still thinks about pushing past Michael in the bathroom but finds the guilt is sometimes soothed by tipping his head to rest on Michael’s shoulder, by Michael bringing his hand to brush over Jeremy’s knuckles.  

(Well. Maybe not soothed. But knowing Michael is there and proving that Jeremy isn’t going to leave at least prevents it from consuming him like the flames he’d spent so long in).

 _After_ is Michael showing Jeremy his shaking hands and Jeremy will listen when Michael explains why he can’t get them to stop. He’ll settle his own palms against Michael’s until the trembling smooths out, and then he’ll pull their hands into his lap and keep them there as long as Michael will let him.

Jeremy will call him at night and explain the way the Squip slowly burned away everything he was.

Michael will tell him about burning the remnants of fourteen years in a garbage can on his porch.

Jeremy will tell him what he felt in that car at the end of sophomore year.

Michael will tell him about the bathroom.

 _After_ becomes the first time they’ve ever had to _learn_ each other. Before, there wasn’t anything _new_ to discover, because they were learning each other together.

To Jeremy, everything about Michael was as familiar to him as his own self. Even back during those initial smoke-addled nights on that red leather couch when Jeremy was trying to learn how to kiss, he knew just how he fit at Michael’s side. Even during their first kiss, and their second, and their third, even when neither of them would talk about it sober, he knew exactly how he felt and what he wanted and how full he was with whatever Michael was willing to give him, with what Jeremy was willing to give in return.

 _Before_ was easy and familiar because it was as much _Jeremy_ as it was _Michael,_ because the line between them had gotten hazier and hazier until you couldn’t tell them apart at all

(Looking back, that might have been the problem all along)

 _After_ is a long road. The first time Michael kisses Jeremy after the Squip, their teeth clack and Jeremy can’t quite find where he fits at Michael’s side. But Michael is slow, and soft, and something new and raw glows in Jeremy’s ribs when he places his hands on Michael’s skin, and he settles into how much he is willing to do in order to find that place again.

 _After_ doesn’t come easy, but it does come after all. They learn that rebuilding fourteen years works best by admitting everything that they have never talked about sober. But, unlike before, they figure out it’s better to start late than to never start at all.

The heat inside him is quiet and low these days, just enough to stoke the glow, but Michael has taught him that fire does not need to _consume_ in order to keep him warm. 

In return, they’re both learning how to be okay with sparks. And although _after_ is a long road, Jeremy finds that the embers at the root of his skull are more than enough to light the way.

**Author's Note:**

> i am on [tumblr.](http://danisnotofire.tumblr.com)
> 
> kudos and comments keep me warm at night c:


End file.
